Too much repetition

On one hand, it feels like a lot of the story was skipped. The drama didn't show the process of the female lead falling for the male lead. One second she dislikes him or he's just a junior to her and next scene she's in love with him. Same with Gu Qing, the second female lead. I didn't really understand when/how she fell for him. It seems like she loved him immediately after finding out he has the bluestone. But then when she finds out it wasn't his and he wasn't the one she was looking for, she still loves only him.

On the other hand, I wish some repeated scenes would have been skipped.
Every episode something would separate the FL and ML, then they get together again, Gu Qing keeps begging ML for his love, he keeps rejecting her, Yin Feng keeps trying to kill ML, Gu Qing keeps sacrificing herself for ML, Yin Feng keeps sacrificing himself for Gu Qing, and then when the amnesia kicks in for FL, she keeps forgetting ML, falling in love with him and then forgetting him again.
It's ok if you repeat a story plot once or twice at most, but each of these mentioned happened between five and a dozen times to the point that it's ridiculous. Feels like the whole drama is just a repeat of the same scenes over and over. The whole 36 episodes could have been cut to just 12 if we remove the copy paste scenes, which become jarring and tiring.

I did like the main characters' resolves and their values and that's the only reason I'm rating this drama so high.

I didn't like some things regarding the ending.
For example the fact that ML did kill Ling and the Endless Sea Guards. Even if all the rest could be explained, this is not a forgivable act, but they seem to have forgot this as it couldn't explain his behaviour.
Also, I don't like how Xuan Zhen has to live in the shadows and protect Xi Xuan Sect from the dark side of the mountains for no reason. Not sure why he can't still meet his friends and have fun with them. It all makes no sense and it's plain stupid.

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Expected more

The romance was close to none and I didn't feel any chemistry between the leads. None of the characters called out to me, nor did I find any of them charming.
I started watching for HyungSik's face value, the main male actor, and kinda stayed for the intrigue. The resolution was however a bit disappointing.
The people who were persecuted in the past now killed and hurt a lot of innocent people. I especially don't understand why the queen was so set in making the Crown Prince's life hell, when he didn't have any fault in anything.
The female lead was supposedly a genius detective, but other than her revealing the hand - blood thing at the beginning, she didn't make any other discoveries all throughout the show. Even the coroner was the one who uncovered the twin secret.

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I would recommend this drama to young children up to high-schoolers. It's overall a really light watch, that doesn't require heavy thinking and is aimed at younger audiences.

Although the plot is kind of ridiculous, the actors themselves are actually good.

I mean, even with the schooling system in South Korea, there's no way the students, parents, teachers, news reporters and the whole country would stay quiet if so many students of the same school killed themselves one by one, no matter if they were all bottom of the school when did it. No parent would sent their kid to such a school, no matter how prestigious it was. This would quickly come to the attention of the public. Plus there's no way the police wouldn't find anything suspicious after the 3rd consecutive "suicide", not to mention the following ones. And before they'd even start to investigate things, they'd first shut the school down.
A few more unresolved/open to question aspects are that 1. the mother of the female lead didn't even come help in the final showdown when her daughter could've died for the sake of the drama plot and 2. we didn't find the original story of the evil spirit. It was hinted that he was maybe a teacher who was obsessed with getting rid of the bad students, but would've been curious to find out more abt him.

Anyway the main leads were really cute. I especially followed Nam Da Reum after he played the child version of the main lead in While You Were Sleeping, and tried this drama because of him.
I only finished the drama, despite how childish it was, because all the actors, main or supporting, were actually good. Plus the episodes were short and I watched them in double speed lol.

Random p.s.: I have to say this short hair doesn't suit Kim Sae Ron at all.

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Would've been better to stick to the novel

Why does every "drama adaptation" out there take JUST the idea, and then make a new, worse story out of it?

I disliked the FL. She was ok in the beginning, but became really condescending at one point. She just carried herself with an attitude of self importance and she often overreacted/overplayed. I also feel like romance wasn't needed at all in this drama, as it changed Rembrandy's character profile, which was an uptight funny priest that I loved. But them drama scenarists gotta ruin every original story.

For the plot twists, they could've been done better.

Firstly, there were lots of hints that Redlyn was evil, indeed. But why didn't she appear earlier? She's supposedly the main villain, but she only appeared in the last 1.5 episodes and was quickly taken care of. It would've been better if she appeared half-way or, even better, at the beginning of the story and she acted nice to throw us off. And the last fact about her, that she was a seaweed spirit who evolved into a deity that was explained in the last 10 minutes when no one asked, was totally unnecessary. Please stop adding last minute ideas with no foreshadowing from earlier.

The...uh, "Evil One" looked like a small fry wannabe villain. I totally couldn't take him seriously with his chubby cheeks, he looked like an angry plushie. His acting wasn't much better, there was just nothing dangerous looking abt him overall.
And then his reason for killing and wrecking havoc was really disappointing...I was expecting him to have a reason to hate everyone and especially the Pontifix. But it was all for a childish promise Redlyn gave him with no deadline: that if he keeps killing ppl, she'll be with him in the end. Lame. Eff off, horny teen.

There were a lot of small plot holes.
It wasn't clear if Redlyn absorbed the power of the other Pontifixes as well. She's the one who gave them power to begin with, from what they say. As opposed to Rembrandy, which had deity's powers and got strong from ppl's beliefs. So why did she kill the other Pontifixes then? And even if she absorbed their power, what abt the population? Why did she kill the common ppl? And she kept saying how she decided to get rid of Rembrandry bcz he started interfering with her plan. What plan? What interference? Was there a plan before you decided to take his power??
Even weirder were all the over-the-top scandals Woo Yeon Woo was involved in as an idol. Ppl would start either suspecting some conspiracy against Woo Yeon Woo, maybe supernatural business or even they might stop believing the subsequent scandals altogether. There was just too much exaggerated drama that wouldn't fly in real life. Ppl are not that stupid and easily swayed as they were made out to be. A few - maybe, but not the majority.
And then the stupid idea that Woo Yeon Woo was a middle aged minion that pretended to be Woo Yeon Woo. Ugh, stop it with the silly "plot twists"! At this point, they're just cramming as many as they can for the shock factor!

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Similar to Squid Game

Dark, Psychological and touching at times. I wish we had more happy episodes, but someone got infected, or died or something like that in every episode and each episode was stressful. But, nonetheless, a good and unique drama.

One thing that might have made the drama even better are romantic melodies. There were so many heart-warming moments between the main leads, between families and even between strangers. If only they were accompanied by fitting music, they would have had way more impact.
There were a few creepy, dark BGM songs, a few which were good, played seldom anyway.

A few of the inconsistencies I noticed are:
1. Why didn't they prepare animal for the infected to attack? Would they not have been interested in animal blood because they can't pass the virus on to them?
2. How come their doors worked when they didn't lock it & no electricity?
3. Why didn't the health service under Han Tae Seok use shielded/anti-missile cars to travel to Yoon Sae-Bom's area? I think they would have been safe against zombies and could have easily retrieved her/protected her since she was so important.
4. Did Andrew like the boyish girl? Why did he give her food? Why did he give the cleaning lady he later killed an apple? IF he's a serial killer, than what was the point of those acts?
5. Maybe the biggest inconsistency is that no character mentioned even the word "zombie", but only used the terms "infected", "sick" or "mad person disease". Let's be honest, people would definitely associate them to zombies in real life.

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